


This Too Shall Pass

by hummingrightalong



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, Rickyl, Walker Death, merle's walker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-08-30 03:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16756681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingrightalong/pseuds/hummingrightalong
Summary: Rick finds Daryl mourning his brother. He's been needing to tell him something and now seems like the the right time...it might now be, but this relationship has been thrown together from the start.





	This Too Shall Pass

Daryl falls to his knees, allowing himself to finally let the tears fall. He feels his face get hot, his eyes sting. He feels the muscles in his body go weak with it all. Every memory of his childhood rushing back, the good and the bad. 

He tries to hold on to the anger, the injustice of it all. It’s just so unfair. And it’s not like there weren’t moments he could’ve killed his brother himself. Not like this, not as brutally and callously as the governor had...he can see by what’s left of Merle that he’d taken quite the torture and beating before giving in.

Give him a hammer, he’d shit nails. He remembered telling his friends that. 

It was damn true. For everything that’d been between them, for all the feeling that Merle had failed him with his mistakes...in so many ways and so many times...when he was good he was the best. And someone Daryl looked up to. Would always think back on with fondness and a morbid sense of admiration and someone better help the dumb fucker who was ever foolish enough to argue it.

And then all the memories and all the strength it takes to put the man down takes almost everything he has left. He doesn’t feel his back hit the ground so much as his feels his body lose the strength to hold him up. 

That’s how Rick finds him, when he finally tracks Daryl down- scared shitless at every body and every walker he sees. 

He spots Merle first. Rather, he spots what’s left of Merle first. Dead. Gone for good. Then the unmistakable limp body of Daryl, fingertips weakly grasping the bow at his side.

The only thing that keeps Rick from losing his damn mind all the way are the weak gasps and whimpers coming from the tracker. Those aren’t the noises the dead makes. Those are sobs. Tiny, broken, almost child-like sobs (he’d never imagine could come from Daryl of all people) that are dragged out from a man’s very soul and Rick can’t fucking take that anymore.

He rushes to him, kneeling, practically on top of him, and he just finds himself babbling as he lays hands on either side of the man’s face. The man who has been there with him for everything, who has supported him and his family when he couldn’t even stand on his own two feet. He’d been raising his fucking child, knew a baby that small without her mama needed to eat and she was damn well gonna. If there was ever a time to tell him how he’d been feeling it was now. Even if it sounded crazy, barely made sense, if it got through to him at all he had to tell him.

“Jesus, Daryl, please don’t leave me. I was so scared, and I’m so sorry. I’m so damn sorry about him and I *wanted* to give him another chance too, I believed he could. But even though he’s gone, I need you. I need you to come home with me and carry on. The kids need you. I love you. You’re *mine* and I love you. I love you so damn much, more than anybody or anything I’ve ever loved.”

Daryl blinks, still making that gut wrenching sound but it quiets some. He reaches up, lets Rick help him to his feet and promises he will. He never expected this to happen, even after he found Merle’s fucking hand on that rooftop he’d known it'd take more than that to kill the idiot and he’d find him...He didn’t think he’d lose him, not like this. But it’s not enough to make him give up, Dixon’s don’t quit that fucking easy…

And he loves Rick too. And the kids. Never saw himself being a father, or anybody’s anything really. Except maybe Merle’s brother, but he wasn’t that anymore...He was Rick’s though. Rick wanted him. ‘You’re *mine*’, he’d said, all but *growled*. His eyes were wild, any normal person might've turned tail and run from the crazy fuck. But Daryl had never been normal, had he?

Rick ducks under an arm and tries to help Daryl walk away from the body. Even with no strength left in him he insists they bury him- so Rick moves the body away from the carnage and somehow they do it together. And that’s all Daryl has in him- just for the moment, collapsing against Rick and sobbing, still promising he’ll be ok later while threatening the other man not to ever tell a fucking soul he broke down like this. 

Rick promises all that, adding “you’re damn right you’re going to be ok. Not right now, and that’s fine. But you’re going to get through this cause you’re mine. Cause you pulled me back from the brink after I kept losing and then lost myself...but you, you’re always there and you’re mine. I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> For my <3, who lost 2 of her grandparents this week. It's going to get better.


End file.
